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EFF and heavyweight legal team will defend Internet Archive against publishers

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Re: EFF and heavyweight legal team will defend Internet Archive against publishers

#101

Post by jjcon »

gpm wrote: post #79
jjcon wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You're nitpicking the language in a hypothetical here. That is exactly what you are doing by picking a bone with the phrase wrong side of the law

No, it isn't. By saying the EFF is on the wrong side of the law you are implying that they are acting badly, this is simply not the case and needs correcting. There is a reason why falsley accusing someone of a crime is libel in and of itself and is actionable under the law regardless of damages, I don't think this quite reaches that standard, but it is damn close.

EFF IS on the wrong side of the law. Yes everyone deserves a defense but you yourself admitted IA was in the wrong and EFF is choosing to go to bat for them.

Re: EFF and heavyweight legal team will defend Internet Archive against publishers

#102

Post by sp332 »

mantap wrote: post #69
hyko wrote: post #57

How do we back up the Internet Archive? If they lose this case then it will be like losing The Great Library of Alexandria. This is our culture. This is our heritage! Edited to add: when I say “back up”, I mean preserve the data and the archival mission (minus the legal quagmires). The technical challenges can be solved, and we should do this before it’s too late. It seems there was a previous effort, but it has lost…

It's possible that over the long term it could be backed up via torrents. However, in the short term the only way to save the archive is for IA to sell it. I hope they swallow their pride and do so.

Torrents are a distribution mechanism, not storage. Many IA items already have torrent links available (with a fallback to a "web seed" since they are mostly not seeded).

Re: EFF and heavyweight legal team will defend Internet Archive against publishers

#103

Post by pitaj »

Gaelan wrote: post #84

[I typed this up as a reply to a comment that has now been flagged. I think it's a conversation worth having, so I'm putting it at the top level instead.] I'd argue that "intellectual property" is fundamentally different from physical property, and can't really be "stolen" per se. If I steal your car, I have a car and you don't have a car. If I "steal" your book, we both have the book. I'm better off, and you're no w…

> I imagine there's been measurable harm to our society's cultural and scientific advancement because copyright forces us to recreate others' work instead of building off of it.

Part of that harm is in creating monopolistic entities like Youtube because only big players can take on big media. If Youtube didn't have contentID they'd be sued into the ground by the publishers.

> But what does that world look like? Quite frankly, I'm not sure. Of course, we can't just abolish copyright with no replacement; it's certainly necessary to reward the creation of this work somehow.

This is, in many ways, a world in which we already live due to the proliferation of piracy. There's still plenty of monetization opportunities:

- Art commissions

- Patreon

- Ad-sponsored serial content

- Subscription models

- Live shows

Re: EFF and heavyweight legal team will defend Internet Archive against publishers

#104

Post by toomuchtodo »

sp332 wrote: post #102
mantap wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's possible that over the long term it could be backed up via torrents. However, in the short term the only way to save the archive is for IA to sell it. I hope they swallow their pride and do so.

Torrents are a distribution mechanism, not storage. Many IA items already have torrent links available (with a fallback to a "web seed" since they are mostly not seeded).

Roughly 44 million items are available via torrent (I maintain a catalog of IA items independent of IA, with each item's torrent file). Wayback data is not (to my knowledge). This is important, as IA then can act as a global metadata catalog for the items, with the underlying content being served up through an uncoordinated fleet of seeders. I think many might agree that the time has arrived for this data to live on globally distributed storage nodes.

It would be helpful if IA published Wayback data files over torrents, alongside cryptographic signatures of the files (for attestation and provenance purposes, as Wayback data has been used in legal proceedings and you would want that trust in the data maintained regardless of where the bits were retrieved from for hydrating the WARC client side).

Re: EFF and heavyweight legal team will defend Internet Archive against publishers

#106

Post by adamsea »

jjcon wrote: post #98
Gaelan wrote: post #84

[I typed this up as a reply to a comment that has now been flagged. I think it's a conversation worth having, so I'm putting it at the top level instead.] I'd argue that "intellectual property" is fundamentally different from physical property, and can't really be "stolen" per se. If I steal your car, I have a car and you don't have a car. If I "steal" your book, we both have the book. I'm better off, and you're no w…

> I'm better off, and you're no worse off. In an "ideal" society, the free sharing of knowledge would be not just allowed, but encouraged. I agree that theft of digital goods is not equivalent to physical goods but abolition of copyright does not follow from that fact nor does it follow that theft of intellectual property is not possible. I also agree this is an important conversation to have. The whole idea around c…

I think if you talked to most authors they would have strong feelings that there need to be some legal means to ensure they are compensated for their work, and that someone else doesn't straight-up copy their novel, and then publish it and make a bundle.

I do totally agree that copyright is messed up, big-time.

To be honest I'm not sure that "free" sharing of knowledge really exists. Even in scientific communities I imagine certain knowledge is held back until, say, it's ready to be published so the scientists can get first credit. And so on.

Re: EFF and heavyweight legal team will defend Internet Archive against publishers

#107

Post by dctoedt »

Gaelan wrote: post #84

[I typed this up as a reply to a comment that has now been flagged. I think it's a conversation worth having, so I'm putting it at the top level instead.] I'd argue that "intellectual property" is fundamentally different from physical property, and can't really be "stolen" per se. If I steal your car, I have a car and you don't have a car. If I "steal" your book, we both have the book. I'm better off, and you're no w…

You're channeling Thomas Jefferson, who himself channeled a Zoroastrian idea. Jefferson said: "... no one possesses the less because everyone possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me receives [it] without lessening [me], as he who lights his [candle] at mine receives light without darkening me." [0]

The flaw in this concept is the free-rider problem:

1. Not all new IP can be created as a side project without funding.

Suppose that I have to come up with an investment of $X million to pay for the goods and services needed to develop something.

(Even assigning existing employees to do the work is an investment, because the money used to pay them presumably could be used for something else — i.e., investing in the new thing represents opportunity cost.)

Suppose also that the resulting IP is easily copied once the new product or service is out in the open.

Without some kind of legal monopoly under IP law, copiers — who aren't burdened by my development costs — can quickly run the market price down to marginal cost.

2. A marginal-cost market price means that I can't charge enough to be able to recoup my investment while still staying competitive.

That, in turn, means that I'm unlikely to be willing (or even able) to fund the investment needed to develop the IP.

3. That's why the U.S. Constitution, article I, section 8, clause 8, allows Congress to create IP rights for limited times.

[0] https://uh.edu/engines/epi792.htm

Re: EFF and heavyweight legal team will defend Internet Archive against publishers

#108

Post by enriquto »

WaltPurvis wrote: post #88
dangerlibrary wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Violating copyright and stealing are fundamentally different things. If I steal your tv, you no longer have a TV. If I pirate a book, all existing copies of the book still exist. If you price a book above what I'm willing to pay for it, I'm never going to buy it. Ever. If my willingness to pay is "$0", then you can't even argue that the creator has lost revenue if I pirate it. I was never going to buy it - it's too e…

Your philosophical musings are not uninteresting, but they are irrelevant to the fact that violating copyright is defined as stealing property under US law. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/part-I/chapter-11...

> Your philosophical musings are not uninteresting, but they are irrelevant to the fact that violating copyright is defined as stealing property under US law.

Your philosophical musings are not uninteresting, but they are irrelevant to the fact that freeing slaves legitimately bought is defined as stealing property under US law.

Re: EFF and heavyweight legal team will defend Internet Archive against publishers

#109

Post by markvdb »

Gaelan wrote: post #84

[I typed this up as a reply to a comment that has now been flagged. I think it's a conversation worth having, so I'm putting it at the top level instead.] I'd argue that "intellectual property" is fundamentally different from physical property, and can't really be "stolen" per se. If I steal your car, I have a car and you don't have a car. If I "steal" your book, we both have the book. I'm better off, and you're no w…

There's a real cost to government and society enforcing the copyright monopoly for the copyright owner. So why not have the copyright holder pay for upholding copyright?

Imagine differential pricing for enforcing copyright on a work depending on parameters:

- grow with every passing year - change with the level of protection required

  - zero for public domain and free (BSD/GPL/permissive CC style licensing)

  - symbolical amounts for CC no derivatives or non-commercial licensing

  - fixed amount plus percentage of revenue for other, more traditional licensing

Re: EFF and heavyweight legal team will defend Internet Archive against publishers

#110

Post by Rebelgecko »

Gaelan wrote: post #84

[I typed this up as a reply to a comment that has now been flagged. I think it's a conversation worth having, so I'm putting it at the top level instead.] I'd argue that "intellectual property" is fundamentally different from physical property, and can't really be "stolen" per se. If I steal your car, I have a car and you don't have a car. If I "steal" your book, we both have the book. I'm better off, and you're no w…

>If I "steal" your book, we both have the book. I'm better off, and you're no worse off.

That's only true if 0% of copyright infringers would've paid for the book (either directly or via checking it out from a library that pays publishers per-borrow). That may be true for some individuals, but there's no way that it's true in the aggregate. There are some cases where copyright infringement might help with the bottom line (like if someone torrents a band's CD which inspires them to attend expensive concerts), but I for books I think that effect is drastically overpowered by the # of people that just don't want to pay.

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